If health and fitness is already part of your employee benefits and workplace culture, you may be wondering how to measure the results of your investment. Let’s explore how to track employee wellbeing.
3 pillars of workplace wellbeing for employees
Before we look at ways to measure employee wellbeing, it’s worth considering what “wellbeing” means. We encourage employers to look at three key areas of wellbeing: mental wellness, physical health and fitness, and financial wellbeing.
Mental wellbeing includes morale, enthusiasm for work, and motivation as well as the more obvious mental health.
Physical wellbeing covers safety, as well as long and short term health issues, musculoskeletal issues, and physical fitness.
Financial wellbeing includes money management, long term financial planning, and the impact of work-related costs such as food, clothing, travel.
Key KPIs for measuring wellbeing in the workplace
- Employee job satisfaction
- Rates of retention and turnover
- Productivity and quality of work
- Management and peer satisfaction
- Work environment satisfaction
Strategies for measuring employee wellbeing at work
Psychological safety assessments
Psychological safety at work can be measured by providing employees with a comfortable space where they can talk about wide-ranging views without judgement. It’s important to know about individual psychological safety, and feelings of psychological safety within teams, between peers, and between employees and management.*
Physical health and fitness
Wellness programmes can be a good way of assessing physical health to spot where you can offer valuable support through employee benefits. Wellness programmes at work can include health check-ups, ergonomic work spaces, appropriate fitness challenges, and discounted or free access to gyms.
Employee surveys
Employee morale is less tangible than some metrics but can often reflect the general culture of the workplace. One way to assess this somewhat accurately is through employee surveys that include questions on job satisfaction, motivation, and emotional wellbeing. Gallup’s Q12 survey gives useful guidance, suggesting 12 key questions to ask employees about their experience of the workplace. However you choose to design your surveys, track changes to responses to see where measures should be put in place.**
Listening to feedback
Put systems in place where employees can give feedback and make suggestions without fear of consequences. This encourages a culture of openness and inclusivity and allows people to feel heard.
Measuring productivity
Use tracking tools and software to measure changes in productivity levels. Increased productivity can suggest good workplace wellbeing and happy, healthy individuals. Be sure to let people know how and why you are tracking their productivity so they don’t feel pressured.
Measuring engagement
Engagement can mean showing up to events, training sessions, workshops, and doing CPD. It might also look like offering to collaborate, or suggesting ideas. Any extra engagement outside of a person’s remits suggest a happy, relaxed employee who doesn’t feel overwhelmed.
Peer recognition
It doesn’t have to be “employee of the month”, but peer recognition schemes help people feel recognised by their workplace throughout the year (rather than waiting for the Christmas do).
Use of annual leave
If people don’t use up their leave, this can be a sign of overworked and overwhelmed staff. And if they’re not overwhelmed already, they will be after they don’t take time off. Encourage everyone to use their full quota of leave and make it easy for them to do so.
Absenteeism
Increased attendance suggests good employee wellbeing. Frequent absenteeism can signal underlying health or wellbeing issues like stress, overwhelm, or diseases that might be eased by a better work/life balance. Track the metric of attendance or absenteeism to identify patterns and explore root causes. Approach this with curiosity and a willingness to solve the issue, rather than to assign blame.
Retention and turnover
Retention rates are a key indicator of employee wellbeing. There are many reasons for people leaving a job. But it’s important to realise that turnover can be linked to workplace culture, wellness, and employee benefits. Surveys, performance reviews, and exit interviews can give useful insights into what can be done to improve retention.
Wellbeing initiatives
As well as offering fitness as a benefit, be sure to encourage wellbeing initiatives like flexible working hours, remote or hybrid working, and boundaries between work and home life (this includes digital, email, and social media).
Recruitment and quality of hire
Your workplace wellness initiatives can be reflected in recruitment metrics. A workplace with a strong wellbeing culture tends to attract better talent and fill positions more quickly. Measure this metric through time to hire (the average number of days from posting a job to filling the role) and quality of hire.
Return on investment
Your investments in employee wellbeing should yield a positive return. To measure ROI, compare the cost of your wellbeing programmes and employee benefits to the financial impacts of reduced absenteeism, lower turnover, and attracting top talent. Tracking this metric can justify the investments you make and encourage more budget allocation in future.
Integrating measurements of wellbeing in the workplace
To build a comprehensive picture of how effective your workplace wellbeing is, you’ll need to integrate employee and business outcomes (both data-led and anecdotal). This ensures your initiatives around mental, physical, and financial wellbeing are contributing to the success of your business as well as to the health of employees. Regularly analysing data and comparing investment against cost savings can guide strategic decisions to keep you one step ahead of employee wellbeing.
*https://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/Group_Performance/Edmondson%20Psychological%20safety.pdf
**https://www.gallup.com/q12/
